


Gone Too Long

by onotherflights



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pining, he's working on it, henry has a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 07:10:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19389073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onotherflights/pseuds/onotherflights
Summary: “It’s only an ocean between us.”Or; Henry still wants Alex all of the time, even when Alex is already his.





	Gone Too Long

**Author's Note:**

> ayye back again this is actually my 50th fic on this account whoo! Have some firstprince fluff. (also this is the first thing i've written in literal months i feel rusty so please be gentle but also lemme know if you see a dumb bitch error)

“It’s only an ocean between us.” 

Alex said it once, a flippant comment cast into the air to soften the sting of driving me to the airport. Well, riding with me. Some faceless service member was driving. That only meant his hand was free to rest on my knee, his other wrapped around the back of my seat. His body turned to me and our legs touching. Foot to foot. I was already dreading letting him go. I was already mourning the weight of his real touch - already knowing I would feel the ghost of him for days on my body. 

I always counted the seconds of the goodbye kisses. Seventeen this time. 

“You’re being so dramatic,” Percy bemoans as he flops onto my bed belly first, “It’s not like your husband is off to war. You’ll see him in a few weeks, bruv.” 

A few weeks of phantom touches and painted dreams. Lovely. 

Pez runs his hand along my back, comforting but not distracting. He lets me sulk in silence. The thing about Pez was that he had the same depth inside of him, the same propensity for melancholy. He was just better at hiding it. People didn’t expect it from him based on the way he looked, the way he acted. 

We’d get up in a few minutes and distract ourselves but just then, Pez gave me a few minutes to seep into it. Then he picked me up, got me out of the bed that hid one too many good memories in between its stitching, and he got me out of my own head for a little while. I think out of everything that’s why our friendship had lasted so long and we’d stayed so close. 

We both know when we needed an escape from ourselves. 

I always cling to him the first time. 

I wish I could stop myself but I never seem to be able to do it. I want him to feel me the way I feel him. I want to leave a mark on him, I want to be so entwined with him that he can’t leave. 

It’s always a rush the first time we see each other again. It doesn’t matter if it’s been days, weeks, a month. I touch his hand and just like that i’m counting the hours until we can be alone together. 

“Baby,” he pleads against my neck, his hands chasing the shiver on my skin. “ _Fuck_ ,” comes a second later, his teeth against my lips.

I curl my hand in his hair and press tighter, let all my senses flood. It feels perfect every time, not just the first time. This is my fix. 

This is what fixes me. 

Sometimes I laugh when I come. It’s like I'm so happy to be with him, so in love with him, and it just bubbles up until I’m covering my smile and blushing down my neck. Sometimes it makes Alex laugh too, and he moves my hand away and kisses me between grins. I always like those times, because it means we’ve gotten comfortably elated with each other. Drunk on each other, in love as some would sing. 

Then other times I’ve missed him so much I feel the corners of my eyes stinging when it’s over. It feels like a sharp withdrawal from missing him. To have him back again all of a sudden after however long, to have him with me and on me and in me. 

His thumbs brush the tears away when they inevitably fall down my cheeks, and he kisses my forehead. 

“Baby,” he murmurs gently, “I know. It’s alright.” 

I curl my fingers around his wrist and arch my neck, pleading for a kiss. 

I don’t have to count the seconds. 

I just hold him tight, roll us over and press against him. I whisper against his lips. One word. 

“Again.” 

In the aftermath, he runs his fingers up and down my spine. He has this dopey, sated smile on his lips as if maybe he’s thinking of where my lips were just moments ago. Or maybe he’s just relieved I’m here. Me too. 

There’s nothing I need to escape from when I’m with him. The world can’t touch us when we’re in his bed, my bed, our bed. I don’t feel like I need to hide anything from him. He certainly can’t hide anything from me. I’ve mapped out every inch of him. 

“I love being able to touch you,” he murmurs, tracing familiar patterns on my skin. “It beats seeing you through a screen.” 

When we have to leave each other again I know that’s going to be one of the lines that runs through my head. Floats under my eyelids when I can’t sleep. 

_I love being able to touch you._

He says it like it’s an honor to see me like this, vulnerable and open to him. I have to remind myself that he sees me the way I see him. I can’t imagine someone loving me that much. 

I know I want to get to a place where I love me the way that he does. I’m working on it. 

Sometimes I notice the way he looks at me, and it changes things. 

I pull him close to me before we fall asleep because I know our time together is small. I want to spend every second around him. 

When we say goodbye three days later, he presses a kiss into my hair and promises he won’t be gone too long.

I don’t tell him that I think anything would be too long. 

Sometimes we talk about the future like it’s a dream we’ll wake up to if we try hard enough. We talk for hours over facetime about everything, but mostly the things we dream about. We talk about the house in Texas. We talk more about an apartment in New York that we don’t live in. We talk about exposed brick and a huge loft with only a huge bed to fill it. We talk about the luxury of waking up together every morning, of having hours to spend on each other and not a thing else. 

Still, we can’t stop moving. The work never stops and we both know it’s important. We both want to save corners of the universe, the fact that we ended up saving each other was just a bonus. 

There’s long nights and missed facetime calls. There’s times when the loft in New York seems more like an impossible dream than a plan for the future. 

There’s times we fall asleep on the phone together and I wake up aching for him and reach across the sheets to find him. 

I spent so long wishing I could have him in any way, and this is my punishment.

It’s one of those mornings. 

I’m holed up in Pez’s flat in London. He fell asleep on the floor of his bedroom last night. I laughed, swigged down the last of the wine and picked him up. He’d tuck me in all the same if I was the one sloshed on the floor. Still, it means he’s done for until noon and I have nothing to do today. 

So I text him. 

_You should be here, love._

I send a selfie of half my face and the pillow next to me. He reads it but doesn’t respond. That means he saw it, probably smiled, but is much too busy for my distraction. 

I groan and roll over, my face smushed into the pillow I’m wishing was his chest. I fall back into semi-sleep, the pale morning light filling the room with gray. It will rain within the hour. 

Somewhere between dreaming and being aware of the empty coolness of the sheets, I hear the door creak open. I figure it’s Pez, and I wait for him to stumble in and topple onto me. He’ll groan and complain and make promises never to drink again that he won’t keep. 

Through the open door, I can hear Shaan’s voice faintly from the kitchen. He’s talking on the phone, and it’s a blessing he’s let me sleep this long. It’s my day off, but not according to Shaan. 

“How’s your head, mate?” I mumble into the pillow, not turning around. Pez’s steps don’t sound like the anguished thuds of being hungover, and he doesn’t respond. I hear the door quietly shut and Shaan’s voice dissipates. 

I realize a bit too late it’s not Pez. 

Instead the bed dips, legs crossing over mine, and he lays down on the pillow just as he’s meant to. I smell his cologne, his clothes, and every muscle relaxes. Except for the ones in my face. I bite back a smile. 

He snakes a hand under the blanket, pulls me in by my hip. His thumb rubs over his favorite freckle, as if it’s the part he missed most. He plants a kiss behind my ear and whispers to me, low and soft. 

“You should know better than anyone how my head is, baby.” 

I turn over and open my eyes, and my smile goes to war with his. 

“How would you rate my skill level,” He smirks, “on a ten point scale?” 

I roll my eyes and laugh, playing along. “Oh, I don’t know,” I trail off, my thumb tracing his bottom lip. His eyes close, the sunlight dancing in his dark lashes. 

“I’d say maybe a four,” I tease, feeling the wet press of his tongue. 

He looks up with furrowed brows but doesn’t extract my thumb from his mouth for a moment. 

“A _four_ ,” he scoffs when he finally does, acting deeply insulted. He presses a kiss to the pad of my thumb and then rolls over me, pushes his socked feet against mine under the sheets. “It’s good I came over then, to redeem myself. Clearly you don’t remember my talents.” 

He presses against me just to see how my face changes, then catches the whine slipping out my lips with his own. Soft, warm, perfect. Him. Right where he belongs. 

“Hi love,” I whisper to him, getting a proper look at him up close. 

“Hey,” he grins, his thumb brushing my cheek. “I told you I wouldn’t be gone too long.” 

“Any bit of time is too long,” I tell him, unabashed. 

He kisses me again, and when we part my teeth glint in a sly grin. 

“Don’t worry though,” I say, “You have time to make it up to me.” 

I don’t notice that it did in fact start raining until an hour later. I hear it pattering against the window as I watch Alex lay on my chest. He pushes the sweat that’s collected on his temple back into his hair, and pushes his hair out of his face. 

“So, what’s the verdict? Did I go up to a five at least?” 

I smirk and let my hands wander over warm, bare skin. 

“Oh, give yourself some credit, darling,” I murmur, a coy play at sympathy in my voice. “It’s nearly an eight.” 


End file.
